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The Gap Between Wildlife and the Animal Rights Movement

10,000 Birds

I know on some level, I think that’s something almost all of us can get behind…no one, except the most callous and cold-hearted of the human race things its fine to torture animals, or deny that they are capable of pain and suffering. For example, when the U.S. The logic of this is ridiculous.

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Tom Regan on Utilitarianism

Animal Ethics

Because animals are sentient (i.e., can experience pleasure and pain) and because they not only have but can act on their preferences, any view that holds that pleasures or pains, or preference-satisfactions or frustrations matter morally is bound to seem attractive to those in search of the moral basis for the animal rights movement.

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Plant Rights

Animal Ethics

If Smith thinks that plant rights and animal rights stand or fall together, then he is confused, for there is a morally relevant difference between plants and animals, namely, that only the latter are sentient. Addendum: Smith appears not to understand the animal-rights movement.

Rights 40
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When conservation and animal rights collide

10,000 Birds

But it is important to remember that animal rights and wildlife conservation are two separate concepts (and arguably animal rights is a different concept to animal welfare, but for the sake of this discussion I’m going to treat them as more closely related ideas than they perhaps are).

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On the Psychological Continuum

Animal Person

So, while this fact does not need to concern us, if we are thinking about ethical principles, for example based on rational arguments leading to deontological ethics, that changes when we are talking about how to move society towards this ethical ideal. And human psychology says that humans are far more social than rational creatures.